Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Thoughts From an Old Fogey


I just wonder what would happen if, like for a month, everyone stopped using Facebook, Twitter, email and text. Can you imagine? For most of us the thought is excruciating. I literally don’t know if I could do it. I’m not on FB and could easily quit Twitter, but email and text? That would mean I might actually have to walk down the hall to one of the other offices. What would I do if I needed to ask my wife something from one end of the house to the other? I can’t hear her from that far away. What if I had to actually call someone on the phone? I might not be able to hang up whenever I want. I might not be able to multi-task. I might wind up in a conversation.

Are we missing something?

And how much conflict happens because of our near exclusive use of written communication at this point. How many characters of our texts are used to correct a misunderstanding from the previous one? How long will we carry on a text conversation or back and forth emails all to settle something misunderstood due to the nature of written communication? I mean here we are trying to correct an error with the same tool that caused the error in the first place. Next thing you know we have a mess that might even be hard to fix with a "sit down." When will we ever realize that written communication is vastly inferior to verbal communication? We are such idiots sometimes.

What if we just stopped? What if we said no more texts, at least… for like a month? For a week or two, we’d communicate less probably. We’d just not ask or not tell or not talk. But eventually we might actually call a friend or even stop by their house to ask a question or relay some information. We might drop by just to say Hi or to ask verbally, face to face, if the other person is going to this or that event or how their sick grandma is doing. We might even see something in the other person’s eye and hear something in their voice. We might experience a relationship that is a little more multi-sensory and perhaps soulful than what can be gained out of reading typed characters on a phone or computer.

And this old fogey is as guilty as anyone! I text constantly. I probably send and receive a hundred emails a day! For heaven's sake, I even tweet!

Am I seriously suggesting that I would stop all this? Of course not. I mean, not to text is so 90’s.  I just can’t imagine not being able to text my wife, “Hey hon, when is dinner?” Okay, so what’s reasonably imaginable for me on this topic? Well, maybe I could make a personal commitment that the next time something even starts to be misunderstood, I actually call. Could I do that? Yes. Will I do that? Only if I’m smart. Maybe I could just remember that all this is true and therefore make a point of having more verbal conversations one way or another. Maybe I could just keep all this in mind and be more intentional about stopping by sometimes… and calling sometimes... and putting my phone away sometimes while I'm talking to somebody in person.

Seriously people… we are missing something with all our emails and texts and postings. I see the good in those things too, believe me. I can’t imagine having to call every person to schedule a meeting, and then calling them all back if the last guy can’t make it at that time or whatever. Ugh. And I realize even the Apostles used letters to communicate with the churches. Heck, here I sit writing a blog instead of talking to someone.

So what am I saying? I’m saying there’s a danger here to watch out for, and frankly, I see it exacerbated (would I use that word verbally?) in the younger generation BIG TIME. See, they didn’t spend 75% of their lifetime without most of these things as have I. This is not all relatively new to them. They had these things through their developmental years. They’ve never experienced life without text, for instance. And folks… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but most younger people have at least a little bit of trouble with face to face conversation. If you don’t know this, just try carrying on an actual conversation with someone under twenty, and most of the time you’ll get nowhere… unless perhaps they were home schooled (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that some people still bring up their kids in a way that is counter-cultural and thereby might have spared them from the generality of what I’m saying).

Hear ye, hear ye… all you younger people especially… This old fogey hereby encourages you to work on your verbal communication skills by leaving your phone in your pocket more often. Consider a fast from text, email, etc. just to prove you can do it. Try talking more. I don’t know… just think about it, will you?

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Note To Singles


My son proposed to the sweet girl he had been courting last Saturday, on his nineteenth birthday. My wife and I were a part of the decision and are in complete support. We couldn’t be more excited. He believes she is “the one.” So do we. He even wrote a song for her called, “She Is The One.”

Some would debate this idea. Some would say God does not have a plan “A” for your marital future. So, does He? Is there a “one?” Or are you “free” to marry whomever you choose, and God will help you make it work? 

Pastors get nervous about this question. Some are careful to say, “No there is not a ‘one,’” and I get where they are coming from. They are afraid of the consequences of such a belief. You see, sometimes people want to end their marriage, because they think they married “the wrong one.” But that’s faulty logic. Once you marry a person, he or she becomes “the one.” As Jesus said, “For what God has joined together, let no man separate.” If you are married, the one you married has now become “the right one,” regardless. If there had been someone else God had originally in mind, that person is now cut off and no longer a possibility. He or she is certainly no longer God’s plan for you, but now God’s plan is the person you joined with in holy matrimony, period. [Okay, I said "period," but yes I do realize there are biblical grounds for divorce, yet the point stands that God has a way of working out a plan for you in spite of everything else. "He/she wasn't the right one," is NOT biblical grounds for divorce.]

Another reason people are afraid of this belief is also based on “what ifs.” By the way, when talking about the Sovereignty of God, “what ifs” just really are moot points. But some look at it this way: If you miss plan A and marry plan B, then you’ve now married someone else’s plan A, which means they must marry plan B, and now that person’s plan A is also screwed up and eventually the whole world is marrying the wrong person. This logic kind of cracks me up, because it completely fails to understand the fact that God can work out His plan in spite of any of our less-than-best choices.  See Romans 8:28. We will never completely understand the Sovereignty of God, but to decide He doesn’t even have a plan in the first place, because we are afraid of what happens if we don’t follow that plan, is to render the whole discussion meaningless, and to leave us on our own. “On our own” is not at all what we see in Scripture.

I’ll say it again, if you think you have messed up God’s plan by marrying the wrong person, you are mistaken. You cannot mess up God’s plan. His very best plan possible for your life is now for you to stay married to the person you married. However, this note is written to singles, because singles like my daughter, and others who are still waiting… are on my heart.

And so, I want to state plainly how strongly I believe that God has someone specific in mind for every believer who He intends to be married. It would be very inconsistent for me to say that God has a plan for your life, yet to exclude this most important area, as if God would for some strange reason, leave your life-partner out of His plan. No, I believe God absolutely has someone specific in mind for each of us. I do.

I love the story in Genesis 24, where we find out that Abraham’s faith in God's plan had been contagious throughout his household. Abraham’s servant, who he sent out to find a wife for his son, shared his faith in God, and that faith centered around the belief that God had a plan. This wonderfully-faithful servant prayed, “O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today… now may it be that the girl to whom I say, ‘Please let down your jar so that I may drink,’ and who answers, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels also’—may she be the one whom You have appointed for Your servant Isaac; and by this I will know...” (v.14).

Clearly, by faith, the servant believed that God had a specific person in mind for Isaac to marry. He believed this and he acted on that belief, and by the way, his belief proved to be well founded. Through the union of Isaac and Rebekah, the nation of Israel was born.

Now, some would say this type of thing does not apply to the rest of us ordinary believers. Some would say that the reason this does not apply to all of us is that we are not all Isaac, heir of Abraham, father of nations. But those same people would still say that God has a plan for us.  Well, does He, or does He not? Are we less important to God than Abraham? Is God too small to have a plan for each of us? No, I would say that the difference between Abraham, his servant, and “ordinary” believers today is simply faith. I believe God has a plan that is just this specific for each and every believer. The only difference for us is the degree to which we believe in, look for, and follow God’s plan. Faith is the key to experiencing God’s plan for your life, marriage included.

The prophet Jeremiah said of God, “For I know the plans that I have for you…” and you probably know the rest. Many young believers today have rightly claimed this verse; while some theologians have wanted to correct them, saying that this verse was only for Jeremiah. Not so. In fact, the audience of Jeremiah 29:11 is the entire people of God. At this point, that would be us… the church… the true children of Abraham, adopted into the family of God by faith in Christ. This promise about God’s good plan is absolutely intended for each and every follower of Christ. The only question is how much you believe that and how much you act upon it.

Will you have the faith of Abraham and walk out the plan of God for your life? Or will you assume God's plans are not all that specific and just go your own way, hoping He will bless whatever you decide? I can tell you what most people do. Do you want the life most people have? What about when it comes to your future spouse? I would encourage you to wait for “the one” God has for you. Do so, and you will not be disappointed. God has a plan and His plan isn’t just good; it’s the best.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Birthday Blog


Happy birthday to me? Well, yes. Yes it is a happy birthday. I’m forty-four years old and happy. What is the significance of forty-four? Heck, I don’t know. But what I do know is that I’m happy. I’m not just joyful. I’m happy, too.

Maybe tomorrow I won’t be able to be happy. Maybe circumstances won’t allow tomorrow’s happiness. Who knows? As a Spirit-indwelled believer, I’ll always have access to joy, but happiness is dependent upon happenings, so tomorrow may not be a happy day. But I’m happy today, and I’m thankful for that.

The Bible tells me what to do if I find myself happy. Is anyone happy? Let him sing praises. (James 5:13b). I actually did that this morning and found it rather fulfilling. I’m happy and I know it, so I’ll clap my hands… to the Lord.

Isn’t it weird that Christians almost seem to feel like apologizing for happiness? And hey, I’m the first to remember about “taking up my Cross,” and “This world is not my home” and all of that, but gosh, if the God of the Universe cared enough to save my soul and give me hope and purpose even in this life, how can I not mostly be happy most of the time?

What am I happy about? For starters, as mentioned, I know God loves me. Without that truth, everything else would be sort of empty. But since I know I’m at peace with God in Christ, I’m happy because my wife is the most wonderful woman in the world. I’m happy because my children are flat out amazing and I couldn’t be prouder of who they are in Jesus. I’m happy because my parents love me and still help me be a better person and they are there to pick me up when I need them. I’m happy because my son has met a Christ-like young lady who we all believe is to become part of our family when the time is right. I’m happy because I have a wonderful church family, many of whom really and truly love me. I’m happy because I have a staff family who respect me and support me and who have my back. I’m happy because God has blessed me with some of the most wonderful relationships anyone could ever hope to enjoy.

Lord, I do praise you. My heart sings to You. My soul magnifies the God of heaven and earth, the One who lived and died and rose again. I praise you, God of Goodness and Lord of Love. You have blessed me with more than 10,000 reasons to be happy. This is a happy birthday, because of You. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you for a happy, happy birthday.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

How Big Is My God?


Lately, I’ve been struggling with my concept of God… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Does anyone else ever think about how many people there are in the world? I mean, over seven billion now? Really? That’s just mind boggling. Think slowly… seven… billion… people. Try to imagine. The United States is a drop in the bucket. The state of Washington, a molecule. Longview, a quark. My church, infinitesimal beyond imagination… a grain of sand compared to a solar system. 

And we Christians and our churches say we are trying to “reach the world for Christ?”  Have you ever really thought about that? I mean, really? Isn’t this awfully naïve? Do we need to rethink our language here? Can mere human beings really “reach the world for Christ” anyway? Is this honestly an empty cliché or an attainable goal? Someone hates me now, because I actually think. Oh well, read on if you dare.

When Jesus walked on earth, there were only about 200 million people by most estimates. Then, things seemed doable, I guess. Just think if we only had to cover about half of the United States. Ok, less mind boggling.

By most estimates, somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 people die every single day. That’s not one of my favorite facts, but at the same time, considerably more than that number are born every single day. When seven billion people start having babies, the population explodes. 

According to Pew research, there were 600 million Christians in 1910 and over two billion in 2011. We nearly quadrupled the Christians in the world! Cool! That’s an evangelism explosion, man! Problem is, in 1910 thirty-five percent of the world was Christian. Now it’s down to thirty-three percent. Yeah, even though we’ve quadrupled the number of Christians, we still haven’t kept up with the population. Sure, there are more believers on earth today than ever before, but there are also more unbelievers than ever before.  Not exactly encouraging, considering that means there are more people entering Hell every day than ever before in history, or did the reader forget that’s what the Bible says happens to people who die apart from Christ?

Sorry, this is really sad and serious so far. I should have warned that this is not for the feint of heart. Note the title of my blog. I write to think and think to write. Sorry for bringing you along as I wallow in the mire.

[And in yet another corner of my mind, I tell myself, “Is Heaven really big enough for the two billion Christians already on earth right now? Are we going to have population problems in the new heaven and the new earth? I was really looking forward to meeting Paul. Will I even be able to find him?” I know, I’m terrible.]

There are over four billion people in Asia and less than ten percent of them are Christians. Most have never even heard of Jesus. If one were to think about this too long, one might wind up on a plane. But then, even if a bunch of us learned the languages and overcame oppressive governments to “win Asia for Christ,” and even if we could miraculously reach, say, a billion of them in the next twenty years, how much of that would just be keeping up with the population growth? Regardless, there’d still be at least three billion unreached. Discouraging.

I’m no Calvinist (apologies to those who are), but thinking like this does help me see their side of the truth. Either God does this thing, or it doesn’t get done. Something needs to happen like nothing that has ever happened before… something more explosive, even, than what happened in the first several centuries of Christianity. One thing I know, we can’t reach the world for Christ unless it is through a MAJOR move of God, and I’m talking about miracles here. We can’t do this like we've been doing it. We can't do it ourselves... not even if we tack the words "with God's help" onto the end of our sentence. Maybe it’s time we admitted only God can get this done.

But now I'm back to my initial thought. I mentioned that I’ve been struggling with my concept of God. He just doesn’t seem big enough. The world seems so huge. What does the God who initially created just one man and one woman think of the seven billion of us now? Seems impossible that God could care about enough people to fill every square foot of Texas with just a few feet in between us (yep, seven billion would fill Texas with wall to wall people). But that’s when it hits me. HE IS BIG ENOUGH! God is big enough.  Here I was thinking of God as if He were a slightly more powerful version of ME or something like that. I’m such a moron, but some of you already knew that.

Have you ever thought your way from inner space to outer space? I won’t even start as small as scientists now can. I’ll just start with an atom. One atom has a nucleus made up of protons and neutrons, with electrons orbiting that nucleus in just such a way as to not collide. The number of neutrons and protons and electrons determine the properties of each atom, and different atoms come together to form molecules that, together, determine the properties of whatever matter they compose. Put millions of molecules together and now we can actually see what we’re talking about, sometimes. There’s so much of this going on in my office right now, that I can’t even get my head around it.  How many atoms in my desk, I wonder? Billions, I would imagine. And I’m not even thinking about living matter, like the cells in my body, each one a universe of its own. I’m just thinking about dead stuff: inner space.

Meanwhile, there’s also outer space, in which inner space gets completely lost. The moon spins on its axis while orbiting around the earth, which is simultaneously also spinning on its axis while orbiting around the sun in such a way as not to collide with the other planets (or their moons, each of which spins and orbits) in our tiny solar system, which together forms a fraction of a part of one galaxy, made up of countless solar systems, within countless galaxies in what is perhaps, an infinite universe. How many atoms are in the moon?

Oh, and by the way, my God made all that in like a couple of days. 

Seven billion people? There are countless more solar systems than there are people on earth… far more stars than hairs on the heads of every person on earth. God must be looking down and thinking, “Hmm, still just seven billion?  Maybe I should wait awhile longer.”

God is in control. As Romans 8:29-30 says, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called, and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” I’m not interested in debating the nuances of what this means. I’m pretty sure though, that there’s one thing I can take from this passage without any kind of stretch, and that is: God’s got this.

I am not, by any means, abdicating my calling as a follower of Christ, to take the Gospel to all nations. What I am doing is remembering Who is in control, and Who is ultimately responsible for those seven billion people, and it isn’t me. I don’t understand how, but God IS getting the job done as He sees fit, and I am thankful that He’s using me to do a little bit here and there. He doesn’t need me, but He uses me anyway, even in spite of my momentary doubts and minuscule faith.

How big is my God?  Big enough.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

What Now?


[Warning: I was home sick yesterday and read a lot of news and watched a lot of news programs. In other words, I actually took my head out of the sand, and now I need to vent about what I saw when I looked around.]

I saw a program where a random group of Americans of various persuasions were being asked several questions by a pollster. The nuclear moment came with this question: “Do you believe America’s best days are behind her?” Nearly every hand went up. 

Someone will hate me for this, but I was forced to concur with the crowd. Yes, being honest with myself, I had to admit that this is something I have come to believe. I don’t want to believe this. I don’t know when I started believing this. I hope I’m wrong, but if I’m honest, I believe this nation was greater at one time than it ever will be again. I don’t think I felt this way fifteen or twenty years ago. Thinking back, I know I didn’t feel this way when Ronald Reagan was president. I’m not sure when I crossed the threshold of negativity, and I’m not saying it has all that much to do with who was president, that’s just the last time I can remember truly believing things would be getting better, not worse.

I would like the reader to understand what a revelation this is to me personally. I did not know this was how I felt. I had not come to grips with this until last night. I’m realizing today that this is a profound moment in my own personal history. I now see my nation, the one my grandfathers and my dad fought for, in a state of decline that will ultimately lead to its death, or the death of everything that makes it the country I love. I am shocked by what I just wrote, but I know history, and I know what I’m seeing, and that’s what I honestly see.

Now, understand that as a Christian, I can think beyond all of this, of course.  I realize my ultimate citizenship is in Heaven, and I have a higher allegiance and a higher calling than can be placed within geographical boundaries or nationalistic patriotism. I’m pretty globally minded most of the time, especially as it comes to the value of people and God’s desire to reach the world for Christ, etc., but even though I’m a pastor more concerned with the spiritual realm, and even though I have an eye to the eternal, can I just put all that on hold for a minute and talk about how I feel about the country of my birth and heritage? Yes, I can, because this is MY blog.

All patriotism aside, there’s also the simple fact that I live here. My children live here.  My children’s children will most likely be living here. And I’ve always known what a privilege it is to live here. People fought and died to protect what it means to live here.  Living here means more than we who have never lived anywhere else realize. Our nation has been truly exceptional and everyone in the world knows it. But I fear we are losing our exceptional status at an alarming rate. The problem isn’t just that less people think we are exceptional, it is that we are much less exceptional than we were twenty years ago. That’s a verifiable fact. That’s the hard truth of the matter. Everything that made the American Experiment so great, is being deconstructed while we watch.

Before I digress into the myriad problems we face as a nation, or all the ways we have chosen to erode our exceptional status, let me try to stay on point. What happened to my optimism?  More importantly, what happened to most of the country’s optimism? Is it just that we’ve had an extended down time and so everyone has gone negative? I don’t think so. There were always down times. Is it all because of President Obama? No, three more years, and we can have someone else who won’t be able to bring us real hope. See, there I go.

In the same show last night, another poignant question was asked. The pollster asked, “If I were to offer you 10 million dollars to live anywhere but America, who would do it?”  Most hands went up.  And he sadly said, “I think this is the first time in my life when American citizenship had a price tag.” The truth is many or most people aren’t so sure there aren’t better places to live right now. What if they’re right? What if we have fallen that far already? I don’t really think that, but what if that’s where we’re headed?  Can anything be done to stop our decline?

That’s another blog or book or series of books, I guess, but I’m not writing to solve problems here. I’m writing to face myself in the mirror. Maybe the first step to something greater for me is this revelation. I have lost faith that we can move forward.  I see a nation divided and falling. I don’t want to see this, but that’s what I see. 

My tendency is to start writing paragraphs now about what we should do next. Pray for revival… evangelize more… maybe be more politically active, etc., etc., but no, I think I just need to stay here for awhile in this place where I am stunned by how I really see my own country. I don’t want to feel this way. What now?